


Ghosts

by preraphhobbit



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Other, denny's au, sandor clegane makes pancakes, this is sandor/sansa at its most platonic, yes it literally takes place in a denny's
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 13:16:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preraphhobbit/pseuds/preraphhobbit
Summary: Bugger death. It didn't want me. // asoiaf modern au, sandor clegane is a short order cook at a denny's in the riverlands and meets a customer he did not expect // inspired by a conversation with @bernthai and @chachch_change on twitter





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically sandor's book storyline with sansa's pre-season 6 storyline, further details on the timeline will be fleshed out in a subsequent chapter . i can't explain this fic so please don't ask.

In a cheap motel with dirty curtains he fills the sink with ice and cold water. Plunges his swelling face into the frigid shallows. The pain drifting into a sweet numbness, and when he lifts his head again the water is pink with his own blood. In the mirror over the sink he sews his own wounds. Puts plaster on his cheek and nose. Fingers swollen and clumsy. Through swollen lids he sees a beast of a man, but not the Hound. _The Hound is dead._ Only a shadow of a nameless fear, a man worth pitying, or someone to be afraid of.

They know who he is because of the burn. Like a calling card. At a roadside pub some weeks ago he’d been nursing whisky when a man drunk enough to be stupid had leaned against the bar next to him with a greasy smile.

“You’re the Hound, aren’t you?”

“Fuck off.” Swirling whisky against the glow of the fluorescents.

“I s...saw you on the telly. You were at the right...the riot....saved that bloody Stark girl.” Laughed. “You’re a big boy, aren’t you?”

“I said, fuck off.” Lowered his arm, resting the glass on the side of his hand.

“You ever fuck her?” the drunk man asked, and that was when he’d smashed the snifter against the bastard’s head. Which had gotten him kicked out without the pleasure of finishing his drink, but he’d lost his belly for it after that, not even noticing that the glass had cut up his hand until he felt the blood running down his arm as he drove, and then not caring. Always getting cut up. 

When he’d left the island monastery where they’d buried the hound, the brothers told him to stay out of trouble. Told them ruefully, “Trouble finds me.” To which they’d smiled. 

“The Lord will keep you,” said the oldest brother. “Do not forget his mercy.”

Mercy would have been letting him die. Instead they had healed his wounds, given him clean clothes, a little cash, the old Ford Cortina in their garden nobody wanted. Returned the leather jacket he’d been wearing when they found him, carefully patched. And told him God bless. That had been a month ago, and he’d gotten in three fights since then. Once at the bar, once with a couple of Tyrell goons he’d thrashed and sent reeling, and tonight. Lannisters. Of course it hadn’t taken them long to find him- not as if there were a lot of men with their faces half-burnt off, not as if he could blend. 

They’d come on him quiet, in the dark, the deep red of their jackets blending in with the silky autumn darkness. Wasn’t surprised, but they had caught him off-guard. Had been having a cigarette outside of some greasy spoon bereft of personality, could still taste soup of the day and warm beer. Hated beer, but it was all they’d offered him. Eight of them melted out of the fading daylight and into the alley behind the joint.

“Evening, Clegane.” A fucking Kettleblack. And there was his brother. Had little flip knives in their hands like a bunch of chavs. As if he would be frightened.

“Assmund and Asswald, isn’t it?”

Both brothers ignored this, to their credit. Osmund said stiffly, “Cersei Lannister wants a word.”

“Oh? They finally let her out of prison, eh?”

“You made an oath, dog. And you broke it.”

“I haven’t made any fucking oaths. I don’t owe anything to that conniving bitch.”

“She made you what you are.”

“Bugger that. I’m my own fucking man now.”

There had been eight of them, with little butterfly knives, and he had nothing but his cigarettes and the lid of the rubbish bin in the alley. Nonetheless he was large and brutish and bloodthirsty. Five of them kicked at his ribs and his head and his neck until he sent six of them flying. Then some bit Lannister came at him with a pair of brass knuckles. _Or were they gold?_ Whatever they’d been, they’d made a pulp of the other side of his face before he had the cunt on his back. Left the last one unhurt. A warning.

“Tell the Lannisters their fucking dog is dead,” he spat, shoving the last one into the gutter. “You hear me, you little shit? The Hound is dead.”

So he’d gone back to his motel. Gotten two bag of ice from the office, dumped a third of one into the sink and the rest into the bath. Looked at himself in the mirror, at his ugly face. Half a swollen pulp of torn flesh, the other half a burned horror. At the monastery they had shaved his beard and cut his hair, shaving the side almost to the scalp. “Leave the Hound created by men behind, and see what the Lord hath made,” the brother who had done it all told him, with aggravating pleasantness. 

“The Lord didn’t make any of this. My fucking brother did.”

“No.” The brother blinked at him. “Your brother burned you. He did not burn your noble heart.”

He laughed at this, cruelly and derisively. “Noble? Fuck nobility.” 

The brother looked on coolly. “You cannot escape God’s plan for you. You cannot escape who you are.”

Lowered himself now into the ice and water. The bathtub a sickening avocado green, the tiles too. Bruised ribs, or broken, screaming with pain until the ice numbs him. From neck to toes can feel nothing but a rolling, stony chill, an infinite nothing. When he puts his head under the water he feels the cold caress his cheeks and his burns and it feels like a rare, sweet kiss.

Morning. Awakes from familiar nightmares, naked and bruised and aching, but not so swollen or bloodied as he had been, wrapped in sheets dried wrinkled. Sitting up makes his chest and ribs ache and burn. But has felt worse. His belly wants breakfast. Always likes a full breakfast after a fight. Perhaps that is what they mean by bloodthirsty. 

He dresses carefully, goes to the reception where the old woman who runs the place reclines in a plastic chair, watches Jeremy Kyle on a miniscule television. A new car, an old Vauxhall, parked in front of the fourth room, two doors down from him. Someone new. Someone going south to the city, maybe. As if the cities would be safer.

“Come to pay for another week.”

Eyes him. If she has seen worse than his half-burnt, half-blackened face, she doesn’t let on. Only takes his offered cash with the tips of her fingernails- long, acid green acrylic. Her makeup cakey. She says, “S’nice, love.” And feels her watching him as he leaves for work. The Hound was dead, and Sandor Clegane made pancakes for his living now.

Choose to walk, despite a barmy cold and a wind that sniggers across the concrete. Leaves the Cortina parked behind the motel, walks through a thick fog beset with stinging rain, on the motorway’s gravel shoulder. His hands in his pockets and his head covered with his jacket hood. Winter is coming. What the Starks used to say. _You ever fuck her?_ What the lout, the mangy drunken cunt, had said. Of course not. Had ripped off the arm of the last man who tried, and that was the truth. “You won’t hurt me,” she had said, when he’d left the city for good. Not a question either. Saw clear to the file that resided in the center of his soul, thin and sharp enough to slip between ventricles, to sever capillary. She a more devious little thing than she seemed, small and pale in the darkened lights of the Red Keep’s halls, holding her doll. Himself had a doll once. 

_No, little bird. I won’t hurt you._ Aye, that was what he’d said, but he’d left her all the same. Left her and found another little snarling thing in the woods. Arya Stark. A little bitch. And as hard-hearted as he was. Had tried to kill him, with a rock. Arya was different. _You think I’m a monster?_ Maybe she’d had the right of it, and he was a murderous bastard after all. _Maybe I am, but I saved your sister’s life._ Saved that murderous little bitch’s life too. So the Hound had died for them both in the end, maybe, wherever they were. Arya was alive, he knew that. Too willful to die. Sansa, though- well, that made his ribs ache. Or maybe it was the remnants of the Kettleblacks. The girl disappeared not long after he had, when the Baratheon boy was killed, and he liked to think she’d cut his throat herself. 

The yellow sign, neon and Satanic, loomed out of the fog. Spun slowly, almost drunken. Floating eerily over his head. Then the glow of fluorescents through plexiglass windows. A restaurant like a fish bowl. Maybe it had once been popular, but war had stripped folks from the countryside. Those who remained were stupid or desperate. Perhaps he was both. He was manager and short order cook both, wore a ring of keys at his belt instead of a gun or knife now, had abandoned his bulletproof vest and Lannister reds for an apron splashed with flour. There was one porter, a fat boy called HP, who didn’t make conversation, and a server called Lem. This morning wore a polo shirt buttoned to the neck, that cut into the flesh of his chins most conspicuous. Another sort who, if he’d seen worse, didn’t let on. Maybe apathy was the price of war. 

Yesterday’s apron was hanging on the hook outside of the kitchen. Took of his rain-wet jacket, put on the apron, tied it, and began setting up the things he needed for the day. Eggs in a wire basket, and milk, from the walk-in refrigerator. Sausages and bacon to thaw. Big bins with flour and sugar and potatoes, tins of baking powder and salt and blueberries and chocolate chips, bags of individual packets of sugar. HP decanted syrup into jars, put fresh cutlery wrapped in paper napkins on the table. While himself began to make breakfast. It was his sister who taught him to make pancakes, before she died. Hated himself for never being able to precisely recreate the taste, but one of the last human things he remembered how to do. Breathing and fucking and fighting being the most basic of animal instincts, but he was no dog anymore. Was Sandor Clegane. His own man. He’d told her, _A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And look you straight in the face._ He remembered that. 

He had grown to enjoy, insipidly, this new work. Making the same things every day, matching his creations to what was pinned over the bench, nothing different, serving only the faceless corporate jobs. And cutting no throats, and filling no chests with bullets. The tables were ancient fake wood, the seats sticky plastic vinyl. Every table had a glass bottle of Heinz ketchup, sugar packets in a melanin dish, HP sauce and vinegar and cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin. The cups were all white, the menus sheathed cleanly in plastic that did not suffer spills. Something calming about the sameness of franchise restaurants, wasn’t there? A nauseating comfort in conformity, for he who had not been able to survive by hiding. He who had learned to survive by making every breath a discordance. Big enough for that, wasn’t he? Discovered nobody noticed him if he worked in the back of things, and he didn’t have to kill anyone either.

He put coffee on to perk and took eggs from the walk-in refrigerator, milk in a carton. Heard the murmur of new customers, and HP seating them, and the boy’s slow heavy footsteps bearing their order. It was not so very different than working for the Lannisters, really. Had only traded his gun for spoon and spatula, blood on his hands for flour. But blood lingers long after it has been washed from the skin.

“Two Grand Slams, one buttermilk with bacon, one blueberry.” Shoved the order into its clip and slid it down the line. “They asked for it to be rushed.”

“Rushed? It’ll get there whenever I’m fucking well finished with it.”

Could see through the dock into the dining room, but only the northernmost corner, and so the curved back of a girl with a long dark braid down her back. Fucking figured, didn’t it? He took out the container of fresh blueberries and poured cold water over them. Time enough, girl. Wait ‘til it comes for you. 

Lem, swinging through the kitchen. “I’m on smoke break. Table four needs a top-up.”

“I’m fucking cooking, boy.”

“I’m on break!” And was gone. Little shit. The pancakes were done, golden disks thick as his finger, and the bacon fried crisply. Put butter on the pancakes, added bacon and eggs to one, chopped fruit in syrup to the other. Balanced both plates on his massive forearm, and took the coffee pot in the other. Did hate serving. Especially in a hurry types. 

Saw Brienne Tarth first, and the girl second. Impossible to miss her, really, huge as she was, with her bright yellow hair and a man’s striped workshirt stretched over her broad shoulders. He knew that bitch because she had tried to kill him, left him for dead on some godforsaken stretch of road after poking him full of holes. Would be dead right now if the brothers hadn’t found him. And for a moment considers going back into the kitchen and letting HP serve them, but then thinks _Bugger me_ and goes forward anyway. Sees the woman’s eyes fill with recognition like blood filling water, and sees the girl look at him with a bruised blue gaze he thinks he remembers.

“You-” Brienne chokes out.

Asks, “Who had bacon?”

“Her,” says the girl.

Drops the plate onto the table in front of her with a clatter, puts the blueberry pancakes in front of the girl. “Brienne fucking Tarth,” he rasps. “Did you miss me?”

“I thought-”

“I was dead? No, bugger death. It didn’t want me.”

Folds his arms in front of him and looks down at them both, insipidly enjoying being taller than her. Isn’t used to looking a woman in the eyes, really. The girl looks at him with a slack-jawed mouth and that bruisy gaze. Grabs him somewhere in the middle of the chest and twists.

He looks at her and thinks, Sansa fucking Stark.

The hair is wrong, too dark, and the girl is too thin and too raw. Brienne clutches her butter knife as if considering whether to drive it into his neck. He says, “The past is past, woman. The Hound is dead.”

“But you’re-”

“And who’s your companion, then?”

“Alayne,” says the girl. “I’m called Alayne.”

Her neck turns pink, with fear or anger he cannot tell, and her jaw trembles. 

“We don’t want any trouble, Clegane. We’ll be on our way very shortly.”

“No trouble,” he grunts, and leaves.

Her eyes and the kitchen are melting together like wax, a miasmic nonsense in painful lurid shades. Realizes he is shaking slightly when he pours coffee for himself, and curses. What was this feeling, then, you sentiemental old fuck? He’d been thinking about the Stark girls and getting soft. Or seeing her, or thinking he’d seen her, had made him soft. “I think you love her” said the abbott, on the island, the thousandth time he’d spoken of Sansa Stark. “Her and her sister both.”

“Her sister tried to kill me,” he’d answered indignantly.

“Perhaps, but God made the human heart a curious organ. You speak of the girls as if you admire them. That is not something to be ashamed of.”

“I frightened them.” Had held a knife to her neck when he was trying to save her. Had wept like an idiot boy at her feet before leaving her behind. “Sansa Stark thought I was a monster. Her sister too.” But she’d said, _You won’t hurt me_ , so maybe that was another sweet lie, another excuse, he made to himself. 

The eyes were blue, yes. Though the hair was wrong, and the face too thin. But hair could be dyed and weight lost. And this one walked too heavily, too much like a woman. It had only been a year. The girl would still be a girl yet. Made pancakes and bacon and set sausages frying and made coffee and grated potatoes until everything saturated into vivid technicolour behind his eyes. Could make pancakes like an automaton. His sister had taught him to make pancakes, years ago. Before she died. One of the last human things he remembered how to do. Breathing and fucking and fighting being the most basic of animal instincts, but he was no dog anymore. Was Sandor Clegane. His own man. He’d told her, _A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And look you straight in the face._ He remembered that. 

It figured the Vauxhall in the parking lot was the same as the one in his motel. At eight o’clock when they closed for the day he walked back to his room in the rain and bought more ice from the big freezer outside the office. And the girl called Alayne slipped out of her room and stood shivering. Waiting, maybe, for him to pass by.

Rested the bag of ice on the toe of his combat boot. “Hello, little bird.”

“I thought you had died,” she said softly. She wore a man’s flannel, wrapped tight around herself, and her skin had taken on a pallour grey as death. “She said-”

“No, girl. I told you death didn’t want me.”

“Don’t tell anyone who I am.” Her voice was quiet, taut with desperation like a strung wire. “Please, Sandor.”

His name on her tongue sounds like a prayer, and he hates himself. “Why would I bloody tell anyone?” he rasped. “I’ve got enough fucking problems, don’t I?”

She shrank at his voice and leaned into the lintel of her room’s doorway.

“Don’t be frightened,” he told her. More harshly than he meant. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I know.” She couldn’t look at him, suddenly, and her eyes roved the ground and then the rainy night behind him. “Who hurt _you_?”

“Nobody you need worry your pretty head about, little bird. Go back to your nest and your fucking bodyguard, and we’ll forget we ever saw each other.”

To ask where she had come from and ask why she was there would be to care, and he didn’t care. He was Sandor Clegane. Had untethered himself from sentiments as a lost ship from its anchor. 

He lifts the bag of ice again and moves to leave her, though his flesh shrinks on his bones and his sets up a heavy squelching beat like death. When she says again, “Sandor,” he turns back with rage on his face.

“What?”

“That night,” she says softly. “At Blackwater. Why did you kiss me?”

He looks at her and snorts. “Kissed you? What the fuck are you on about?”

The wind, wet and harsh, catches the loose hair that has escaped her braid and blows it into her face. “You kissed me that night, when you said you would take me north. Why?”

“I didn’t fucking kiss you, little bird.”

“You-” She looks away from him, then back again. “You asked me for a song and you kissed me.”

“I said, I didn’t fucking kiss you,” he growls. “Must have been another dog. Or your cunt husband.”

“He’s not my husband.”

“Married, aren’t you?”

“I don’t care.”

“Aye, and is it him you’re running from? Left one monster and found another?”

“We shouldn’t talk. People might- they might hear.”

He sucks his teeth and lifts the ice in his arms again, jerking his chin her direction. “Another time, then.”

“Goodnight, Sandor.”

“Goodnight, little bird.”

When the ice in his bathtub melts, he wraps a towel around his waist and pulls a flannel over his wet chest. A desperate need for a cigarette. The brothers had tried to make him kick the habit, but somethings died harder than others. Killing he had given up, but smoking he seemingly could not. Preferred Lucky Strikes if he could get them, and carried a big silver lighter. A gift from Joffrey, the little shit, who had the side engraved with the snarling face of a dog. _To our Hound_ etched underneath, as if he were a family pet. Stepped outside to smoke and found Brienne Tarth waiting for him.

Eyed her, said nothing, and lit his cigarette.

“The girl told me what you did for her in King’s Landing.” Her voice is cold, nearly mechanical. 

“Hello to you too,” he said around his cigarette.

Brienne ignored him. “How you protected her. And you…”

“I was a stupid cunt, that’s what I was.”

“Listen to me.” She catches him by the arm- very daring of her, really, and she keeps hold of him even when he tries to jerk away from her grip. Fucking bitch. Almost as tall as himself, someone he didn’t have to look down at for once. He exhales smoke in her face but she doesn’t shrink.

“That girl is danger. Not just from the Lannisters. I swore to her mother I’d protect her and her sister with my life, and I will.”

“How very fucking noble of you.”

“We need help. She’s-”

“You want my help now? Didn’t want my fucking help when it came to Arya Stark.” _And she left me for dead, even after all that._ “Fuck your oaths, and fuck you too.”

“Listen to me.” She pulled him even closer, bold bitch as she was, and hissed close to his ear. “Petyr Baelish took her from King’s Landing and has been keeping her in the Vale. She isn’t safe. You were going to keep her safe once. She needs you now.” She stood back and looked him over and shook her blond, short-shorn head. “God help her, she wants you to protect her.”

He’d once told her there was no safety, and it didn’t seem worth repeating. What could he protect her from? Couldn’t protect himself from a couple of Kettleblacks, couldn’t protect himself from Brienne Tarth or bandits on the road or even from himself. 

He said, “Maybe,” and dragged on his cigarette. And then went into his room and found the bottle of whisky he kept next to the hard, low bed.


End file.
